Former GWBush White House ethics lawyer:An ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush’s White House, Richard Painter, said that what he’s heard about President Donald Trump’s son and campaign staff meeting with Kremlin-aligned lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “borders on treason” and that his administration would already have taken Trump’s team in for questioning. “Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were both apparently involved in this,” Painter said on MSNBC. “And this was an effort to get opposition research on an opponent in an American political campaign from the Russians who are known to be engaged in spying inside the United States.”
Painter continued, “We do not get our opposition research from spies. We do not collaborate with Russian spies unless we want to be accused of treason.”

From Crooks and Liars:
"The most damaging thing is what Donald Trump Jr. admitted to in the statement," he said. "It is a crime to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national in a campaign.
"Now, the thing of value has never come up in this context before because we've never had a campaign like this that potentially colluded with a foreign government. In other cases, bribery and extortion cases, 'thing of value' doesn't have to be money. It has to be something tangible but not money. "It could be he's potentially confessing in a statement to committing a crime, and I think if you're Bob Mueller, you look at that and the lies, the repeated lies, the changing statements from Donald Trump Jr., and from other people connected to the administration -- including the president himself, and you're going to realize the only way to trust what any of these people say is to put them in the grand jury, put them under oath, where if they lie, if Donald Trump Jr. has the kind of shifting statements to a grand jury, he'll go to jail for that."

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Initially Trump Jr. said the meeting was only about Russian orphans. That was a lie. A big lie.

'I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016,' Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.This meeting was initially undisclosed and then lied about.Donnie Junior has put his father in a perilous position.
Donald Trump Jr. confirmed Sunday that he met last year with a Russian lawyer who had ties to the Kremlin, saying she told him at the June 2016 meeting she had information that could damage Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. President Donald Trump’s oldest son said in a statement that an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow, had asked him to meet “with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign.” He was not given a name prior to the meeting, he said.READ THIS ON THE TRUMP FAMILY BY CHARLIE PIERCE:
What Do the Russians 'Have' on the Trump Family? Fear. Some thoughts on Junior's changing story.What I believe I see here is an incredibly corrupt American family doing business with criminal gangs that are way, way out of their league, and that are in league with the institutions of government, and the formidable security apparatus, of an authoritarian state. Talk about punching out of your weight class. This isn't cheating some poor subcontractor. These people throw you out windows. And the Trumps have being doing business in this financial abattoir for years. This doesn't make them sharp. This makes them compliant minnows in a shark tank.
Not to borrow trouble, but what if these guys decide that the president's son—or, god forbid, the president himself—have become as inconvenient as Sergei Magnitsky was. For months now, people have been asking what the Russians "have" on Donald Trump. Maybe it's just fear. If it's not, it ought to be.

My question is this: Along with the GOP putting party before nation, WTF is with the Trumpster Nation? I am amazed and stymied as to WHY these people see no problem with Russia, the blatant disfunction in the WH and incompetence of Trump.

CNN HAS MOST-WATCHED SECOND QUARTER ON RECORD ...cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2017/.../cnn-has-most-watched-second-quarter-on-recor...Jun 27, 2017 - CNN hit a ratings milestone this quarter, with the network posting its ... New Day Grows the Most in Cable News in the Morning, Up +77%.

Dave, isn't it amazing to observe that when a news outlet tells the truth, the wingnuts accuse it of "going left." They've picked up the attack from the Liar-ion-Chief and are going all "meanie CNN!" just like Lord Dampnut. I'm not sure they have the ability anymore to think for themselves.

Ray, The rabid right has gone all funny in the head and have become Trump Zombies. Nothing he does disgusts them. It's some sort of virus theyve passed among themselves.

Anonymous @2:37, the demise of CNN is highly exaggerated. In fact MSNBC and CNN are seeing their ratings increase with every stupid presidential tweet.

Tillerson said Trump and Putin focused on “how do we move forward” because “it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations.”

That would be tragically comic if it were not so threatening to the U.S.A.

What is this? Progressive parenting? The child has to agree to his punishment? That way it is a more constructive interaction?

The United States decrees when and where it imposes sanctions. Period.

Obama proposed moving forward in 2009 instead of blaming the republicans for blasting a hole in the ship of state and damn near destroying the entire world economy. It was a beautiful gesture. And it almost worked. I think that Tillerson is a little bit confused. We don't need to move forward with Russia any more than Kennedy needed to ask permission from Kruschev.

These republicans are submissive to a stronger authority figure. That's not who we are. We are the strongest nation. We set the rules.